by DB Nielsen
“Not fog,” Aislinn contradicted. “Can’t you smell it? It’s corrupted, dark magic.” The putrid, foul odor was stronger now. The rotten, sulfurous stench bled across the Thames. “They’re trying to confuse your senses. If you can’t see them and you can’t smell them, it makes it harder to track them.”
“She’s right,” exclaimed Benjamin, suddenly alert and alarmed. “Check the Minter.”
Responding with authority, Stanislav ordered, “You three. Go. Now.”
The last thing Caleb wished to do was volunteer for duty, but that was exactly what he did. Something was terribly wrong. He sensed it. “I’ll lead. On my command.”
Recognizing his command, the three henchmen fell into line.
Caleb didn’t pause to look around as he leaped from the bridge and entered the brimming waters of the Thames. But this time, the current gripped him, trying to drag him deep under in that first shocking flash of dark magic. Something was in the water with him. A thing of nightmare and lurking death. Sucking away his spirit.
And then there were the teeth.
From above, Aislinn peered down into the churning waters. She anxiously searched for Caleb, but he had gone under, swallowed by the stewing, black waters and the yellow fog, along with the other three mafioso. But something was terribly wrong. She sensed it.
“I’m going in,” she said, readying herself to dive.
“Don’t be a fool,” Zhenya snapped. Her eyebrows drew together in a sharp frown. “Let Caleb handle it.”
There was a moment of silence that stretched out to eternity before the pretty, platinum-blonde daughter of Kayne looked across at Stanislav and said, “I don’t think Caleb can handle this alone.”
Stanislav looked over the railing toward where she indicated. Deep within the swirling waters, pulsing through the yellow fog was a glowing red circle. A circle of blood. “Something’s moving within it—I see it—something shimmering—”
Behind Stanislav, Varya hissed, and Benjamin felt a shudder run down the length of his spine. But Aislinn was standing absolutely still next to the mafia boss, sniffing the air. “Hellhounds—three hundred paces toward the Tower—demon—and dark mages—very close now—”
“Zhenya. Find Thirteen with Varya. Take a few of the men with you.” Stanislav was all business as he pointed to his other henchmen. “You others, hunt down the hellhounds.”
“And you?”
At that, Stanislav grinned. It wasn’t pleasant. “I’m coming with you and Benjamin,” he stated emphatically.
“No, just you and me.” Aislinn’s thin nostrils flared, inhaling a distinct scent of dioxygen, atmospheric electrical discharges, and fresh blood. Her fangs snapped down firmly into position, lethally sharp. “Benjamin, I have a job for you, and you’re not going to like it.”
Chapter 29
Executing a perfect dive into the dark waters beneath, Aislinn immediately felt the unwholesome taint of dark magic wrap itself around her. Even here, the thin elastic veil felt constrictive as if she were pushing against some invisible barrier that hampered movement and suppressed the senses. Yet she was driven to cross this obstacle to reach Caleb.
She felt, rather than saw, Stanislav’s presence beside her. His strokes, though economical and crude, were like the rest of him, a force of resistance and power. His hand clasped her shoulder, and she felt him tugging her toward the Minter’s tunnel.
But she shrugged him off, for in that instant, she saw the ex-military elite forces soldier, and he was in trouble.
The burly Malum was wrestling with a creature that could not possibly have survived the extinction of the dinosaurs. A scaffold of vicious-looking neural spines reaching nearly six feet protruded from its back, the snout was long and narrow like a crocodile’s, and it was far bigger than a T-Rex. The creature was snapping its teeth ferociously at Caleb as they were entwined in a dance of death, and even with all the Malum’s strength, he could not cast it off him.
But this thing of dark magic and destruction did not cause Aislinn excessive concern. For what Aislinn saw was merely a large crocodile, which still didn’t belong in the Thames, but was not the stuff of nightmares, so she didn’t fear it. Instantly, she kicked forward, swimming strongly toward them, unsheathing her skean. The current seemed to strengthen against her, twining around her kicking legs and torso, but then fell away before her thrashing rage and urgency to reach her friend.
Just as its slimy jaw full of razor-sharp teeth opened to take a bite out of Caleb’s torso, Aislinn executed a brutal stop-thrust. In one rapid movement, graceful and dangerous, she extended her arm and skean straight and plunged. The blade’s edge ripped through the creature’s neck. Blood filled the water around them. Magic marks flared in the water, reflecting here and there, and vanished from sight.
Caleb was suddenly free. Thrashing, disoriented, he sunk to the bottom of the Thames. Dull witted from the attack, it took him a moment to realize he was no longer in any danger and thrust forward on powerful strokes, reaching the Minter’s entrance.
Only one of the three vampires sent into the Thames by Stanislav managed to extricate himself from his own nightmare attack to join them in the tunnel. His grizzled salt-and-pepper hair was wet and stained with blood, pouring freely from a head wound, which was already healing. It looked worse than it was.
The airlock remained stubbornly closed.
“Something’s not right with any of this,” muttered Caleb. “This is fucking with my mind.” Most of the blood had washed off him during the swim, but there were deep rents in his clothing from where he’d been attacked. None of his injuries had caused lasting damage and, in fact, had already healed over.
The dark mages implanted powerful thoughts into a person’s mind, making them believe that what was attacking them was the stuff of their darkest nightmares. Caleb had been wrestling a crocodile, a fierce creature and enough to kill a vampire if it had taken off his head or a chunk out of his torso, but the fear of being attacked by something more horrific and dangerous than an ordinary creature meant he could die fighting against mind magic.
This was deadly. Aislinn hazarded a guess that the mind magic had to be crafted to its target, and maybe what made it so powerful and dangerous was believing it was real. It strengthened her resolve to kill the remaining Druids.
“They’re deliberately dividing our forces and picking us off, one by one,” Stanislav stated. “They know our weaknesses. Is not good.”
“You’re right,” Caleb said. “They’re dividing our forces. Creating diversions.”
“Vlad! Thirteen gave Varya the slip deliberately.” Aislinn realized Styx was involved. He was in business with the dark mages. And she’d been the idiot who had suggested he negotiate a better deal. She didn’t have time to kick herself now, but she would later.
“Those bastards. We need to get back up to the surface.”
“Da, you’re right,” Stanislav agreed. “It’s not the Minter they’re after. I’m not sure what the Druids are after, but it isn’t gold or dried blood.”
The silence that followed his claim was not one of hesitation nor doubt. It was the silence of a dawning, horrific realization. They’d been duped.
The Druids were clever. They’d bided their time. The groundwork had been laid long ago, and now their plan was now playing out in earnest.
The architects of the befouled fog waited unwearyingly. Their design had begun lifetimes before in a different realm and continued upon Earth with the leaching of lifeblood from living creatures.
Not all of them had survived.
But they were willing to pay this price, for Death was simply a boundary to be crossed. Another state of existence. One had only to unlock its secrets and be reborn.
The answer lay in blood.
Revolutions, wars, assassinations, the rise and fall of kingdoms, of stock markets, of world leaders were all manipulated by a calculating, Machiavellian being who had bided its time, waiting epochs for the plan to come to fruition
. Most ancient immortals were indifferent to the other species and the world of humans, which allowed this crafty fiend to work its evil virtually undetected.
Until now.
But tonight would mark a turning point.
Enemies could turn allies. Foes could become friends. Until it was expedient to get rid of them.
Benjamin jumped down onto the pavement from the overpass above, unable to clearly judge his landing. The yellow fog was almost impenetrable to both sight and touch. Its elasticity clung to him like a second skin and felt contaminated, but there was nothing to be done about that.
Catlike, he landed on all fours and immediately straightened. His eyes, glittering green like emeralds in the strange mist, searched the immediate vicinity. He was on the north side of the Thames where Aislinn had instructed him to go, from which she had sensed rather peculiar emanations arising from the causeway.
Before him were the cobbled archways leading under Tower Bridge.
And before that was an enormous slaughter stone on the ground, blocking the path, a fallen block that had once stood upright somewhere beyond the metropolis in the distant countryside like Stonehenge and which now lay across the causeway. It had no reason being there. Who had brought it and why bewildered him, but it was the source of the peculiar atmospheric electrical discharges.
As a scientist, he knew that the reddish color of the stone was caused by the rainwater reacting with the iron it contained. But as a vampire who had lived centuries, it was easy to imagine that Druids had performed sacrifices upon this stone since the slaughter stone looked like pools of blood were filling its carved hollows to form sacrificial bowls.
Benjamin could see that the stone was marked with strange symbols, but there were only a few he recognized from his knowledge of alchemy and many more he was unfamiliar with. The limitations of his knowledge hampered him. The symbols seemed like nothing more than meaningless inscriptions carved into stone, but of course, they held an elusive meaning, known only to the Druids themselves.
But what he did know for certain was that it didn’t mean anything good.
It wasn’t what Benjamin had expected, and he didn’t exactly know what he was supposed to do with a carved slab of stone. It wasn’t quite like diffusing a bomb, as there were no buttons to press or wires to cut. If he tampered with dark magic, he was certain it would backfire. Besides, he didn’t know how to wield magic and preferred not to have to deal with dark, corrupt magic.
I’m a vampire, for Vlad’s sake! What does she expect me to do? He sighed. This is gonna be a long night. If I survive.
He approached the slaughter stone cautiously but without real fear. Magic and science were entwined for him. He wasn’t afraid of blood either, being a vampire. Even the dark patches of dried blood he could smell on the stone among the pools of rainwater did not scare him. But still, he approached cautiously.
In the distance, he heard hounds howling, but the fog hid the bridge and was still drifting inexorably up the causeway. Its tendrils continued to creep forward. Disturbingly, it reminded him of fingers attached to hands attached to arms, stretching forward, the jaundiced flesh—
Benjamin stood still for a minute, listening, every sense honed, and concentrated. The yellow fog bounded him in dark magic, created by a singular source. Yet, beneath the sulfur, the scent of fresh blood lingered. Without turning, he knew there were many dead humans behind him, littering the boardwalk, their lifeforce drained in mere moments by some great evil.
Benjamin felt no real sorrow for these human deaths. He shared Caleb’s simple philosophy that humans were food and blood was life. He could not mourn for what he saw as a necessity for his own race’s continued survival. But, of course, there was a difference between himself and the dark mages who had caused these deaths and whom he now sought. As a vampire, he killed mortals to feed. A Darwinian impulse: adapt or die. He did not feed off the other immortal species. He did not experiment with their blood. He did not crave their lifeforce.
Benjamin didn’t unsheathe his blades. He still hadn’t moved. But the yellow fog continued to press in around him, billowing out in an arcane pattern. Unhurried. Stealthy. Twisting this way and that, it moved as if it had a will of its own. The nauseating stench of dark magic and old blood came with it, piercing and sharp. With his vision all but obscured, he was relying upon his other senses. He didn’t need to breathe, but he did need his olfactory sense, and bile rose in his throat in response to the stink. He now felt like both the hunter and the hunted, waiting patiently for the source of the yellow fog to show itself.
He did not have to wait long.
An intensely dark shape loomed up several feet from behind the slaughter stone. The cowled figure took Benjamin’s measure as its eyes rolled back in its head, and, unseeing but all-seeing, it began to speak.
“You show no fear,” it hissed, wielding magic from its fingertips.
“No,” Benjamin replied, standing his ground.
“Fool! You will. Others have come before you and showed little fear, too. But even the stoutest heart and will can be broken. Superior magecraft can bring forth monsters.”
“That’s merely mind magic.”
“You think it only works on weak minds? You know nothing, bloodsucker. I sorrow for the waste of all your centuries of life. I’ve darkened the midday sun, I’ve called up storms and given lightning to the thunderclouds, I’ve conjured magic to turn men into monsters, and I’ve used blood to enslave the will of others. I’ve brought madness and nightmare to the dreams of your kin. You think to pit yourself against me? You are merely a speck of dust that blows away in the winds of time.”
He began to draw symbols in the air with both his hands. They grew more intricate, more elaborate the faster he spun his dark magic.
Chapter 30
Aislinn surfaced on the eastern side of the bridge where stone steps curved into the Thames. Stanislav and Caleb popped up next to her within moments. They were directly under Tower Bridge, but the fog did not creep here. Instead, it formed a curtain on either side of the bridge.
“This place looks familiar,” Caleb said, spitting out a mouthful of foul river water. “Dead Man’s Hole. You might know it better, Stanislav. Ever had to get rid of a human hunter or two before you went with tar pits?”
“Da, this place had its uses,” agreed the underground Russian vampire mafia boss looking up at the dark alcove before them. “Once. But Siberian salt mines are always the most reliable. No need for Cleaner.”
Aislinn looked at him with renewed interest. “I’ll bear that in mind.”
Dead Man’s Hole referred to the mortuary housed beneath the north tower of the bridge, a remnant from the Victorian era. As the Thames was tidal, bloated corpses washed up at this particular part of the murky river with alarming regularity. Some were suicide jumpers. Others had been murdered and dumped into the Thames. Mostly they were human. Though a dead, bluish, mottled, and swollen shapeshifter in human form or a dead vampire didn’t look much different—particularly if the head, throat, or heart had been torn out, or the body had been the feast of fish and other sea creatures.
The area was closed off but still perfectly visible. And the alcove was situated right by the water’s edge.
“Do you hear that?” Instantly, Aislinn was on the alert. From the fog-smothered causeway nearby, a hissing voice could be heard.
Stanislav, who was dripping water onto the ground in rivulets, withdrew his sword from its sheath at his hip. It looked heavy for any normal human but well-balanced in his large hand. This was the sword he intended to use to slay his brother’s killer, the sword of his ancestors. “The chimes of Big Ben. Time to die.”
He didn’t wait for an answer but led the way through the arched passageway, the white tiles reflecting what little light there was and briefly dispelling the gloom of the yellow fog. Yet there was an almost overpowering stench of spilled blood. It soon became obvious that the ground was awash with the dark substance. And not all o
f it was human.
A grim Malum and the daughter of Kayne followed Stanislav, allowing honed senses and instinct to guide them. There was no misstep. Stanislav chose the way by the feel of the deepening taint. Where it felt and smelled most foul, he steered them through.
As they progressed, the stench of corrupted magic overcame the smell of blood. It seemed to cling to their skin, invading their nostrils and their lungs. Aislinn would not allow it to overset her. She had feasted before the battle that was to come and fought the bout of nausea which attempted to weaken her now. Next to her, she heard, rather than saw, Caleb swallow, fighting against the rising bile in his throat and the corrosive taint of the fog.
“I’ve brought madness and nightmare to the dreams of your kin.” They heard the dark mage speaking, and suddenly, they heard Benjamin’s cry of terror. Sparks flew within the yellow fog ahead.
Every instinct made Aislinn want to rush forward to help Benjamin, but Stanislav waved her back. His obsidian eyes flashed a warning.
Stanislav bided his time.
He knew dark magic was not infinite in its supply. The spell the dark mage was using on Benjamin, passing hundreds of volts of electricity through the vampire yet keeping him alive to continue toying with him, was draining him of significant power. He would need to power up again. This would require more blood.
When Benjamin’s screams faded, Stanislav finally judged it safe. Silently, he ushered his companions forward as stealthy as shadows hidden in shadow, the tread of their feet soundless on the darkened concrete and stone as if they drifted over it. No bloody footprint was made on the causeway as they flowed seamlessly like the neighboring river toward the dark mage.
The stocky mafia boss gripped his sword tighter as the scene between Benjamin and the dark mage played out in front of them.
